"The essential act of the Party is to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient."

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I suppose one might consider this a book review of George Orwell’s classic tale of dystopia, “1984.” It is not. Perhaps I am simply a fanboy. Guilty as charged. Who wouldn’t be, living in these near-dystopian times? The society George Orwell described in his famous novel has many parallels today, some eerily similar.

If you doubt we are living in George Orwell’s head, I will make my case, and leave it for you to decide. What is not in doubt is the masterful understanding he had of language and its power over the minds of men.

George Orwell was an essayist. He wrote nearly fifty essays covering a broad spectrum of social topics, often government. He was a novelist, completing three non-fiction and six fiction novels famously including Animal Farm, but “1984” is the one that will live in infamy, to borrow from FDR. Above all, he was a student of language who understood the power of words.

The book “1984” was written in 1948 at a time of great upheaval in the world. World War II had just ended with many millions dead and whole countries decimated. The Marxist revolution and the resulting Soviet regime had killed millions more, and Mao Zedong was about to do the same in China. The Cold War was just beginning and the book “1984” was a nod to a possible dark future.

No doubt Orwell saw the dangers of the totalitarian state. Although an avowed socialist, he viewed the dangers of the Marxist left and Imperialist right with equal suspicion. He saw the apex extreme of both to be totalitarian oppression nearly indistinguishable to the citizens underfoot.

Today we face an American military-industrial empire in the West and a Chinese communist empire in the East, both vying for global dominance, both showing their totalitarian teeth more than ever. While America has pushed nearly continuous military conflicts for thirty years, put military bases in every possible corner of the world, and traded weapons and military protection for economic access, China has poured investment money everywhere it can to gain political and economic leverage worldwide, including in the US, while building its military at home. Both use covert intelligence and state tradecraft to undermine opponents and prop up allies.

China has overtly maintained totalitarian control of government, media, and its population. Until recently America has done so in a more veiled fashion, using the apparency of a two-party system and a hidden influence over media to mask the march toward totalitarian control. Both empires strive to maintain a small powerful elite who benefit the most at the expense of the rest.

Hate.

In Orwell’s world, the citizens were required to participate daily in a Two Minutes Hate for newly designated enemies of the state. These enemies were mostly citizens who had betrayed Big Brother by letting slip a few critical words or engaging in other thought crimes. Watching the ladies on “The View” and other TV talking heads rage against political opponents, or the parade of hate for political others on display at the Democrat National Convention seems an eerily similar hate sport.

The Memory Hole.

In Orwell’s world, inconvenient or embarrassing truths were simply erased. Disfavorable events and people were cut from books and media and dropped into the memory hole to be destroyed. Loyal Party members were required to simply forget the old reality and embrace the new. Today, smashing statues and obliterating street names that celebrated long-revered cultural icons like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln have become a blatant attempt to erase our past.  Revisions of history in books distort reality, where every other historical figure is discovered to be gay or trans, and entire countries and beneficial cultures are labeled universally racist and bad. Even recent events like January 6th are quickly altered to support regime narratives. Political candidates remake themselves by simply denying reality and supporters and all media swear by their new truth. This is so much like the way Orwell’s memory hole ate real history and replaced it with wholly manufactured events, that the phrase memory hole has emerged in current political discourse.

Big Brother.

Big Brother is watching. As a personification of the surveillance state, Big Brother’s watchful eye was everywhere in Orwell’s world. Privacy was a thing of the past and wrong thought or speech was rooted out by the thought police and punished. Complete power needs no rationale. Today we have surveillance everywhere we go. Outdoor traffic cams and closed circuit business security cams watch our every move. Phones signal our location 24/7, all recorded somewhere. At home or work the Internet of Things makes our smart TVs, doorbell cameras, phones, computers laptops, and all online devices ready, willing, and able to be watching and listening spies in capable tech hands. Power is not one thing, it is the only thing that matters.

Doublethink.

Orwell’s world demanded uniform thought in strict support of the Party line.  This required the practice of Doublethink, a self-hypnotic cognitive dissonance where one is compelled to disregard one’s own perception in favor of the officially dictated narrative. Even the language was modified to make “ungood thought” not possible. The word prison was replaced with “joycamp.” The Ministry of Truth, which told only lies, had three mottoes. Freedom is Slavery. War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. Dissenters were tortured in the Ministry of Love and broken, disappeared from society, or killed. Today woke ideology treats disagreeing viewpoints as hate speech and people are banned from social media for spreading disinformation, which only means they dissent from what is often a false regime narrative. Regime loyalists in government and the regime-controlled media practiced Doublethink, pretending for four years that Joe Biden was of sound mind until that became inconvenient. Language is twisted, with anti-racism being racism, life-saving health care being sterilization, disfiguring surgery, or even government-assisted suicide. The Inflation Reduction Act guarantees more inflation, the Border Security bill codifies an open border and more illegal immigration, and the Department of Homeland Security destroys any security we have. Diversity is divisive, Equity is unfair, and Inclusion excludes. The trolling cancel culture will dig up something you said ten years ago and get you shunned, fired, and de-banked. If that isn’t enough to destroy you, you can be sued into poverty, or criminally prosecuted on trumped-up charges in a kangaroo court where conviction is a near certainty. Freedom is Hate, War is a Necessary Good, and Truth is the Big Lie.

Do we live in Orwell’s head in his dystopian world? We are certainly closing in on it. The signs of tyranny are many and unmistakable. As Elena Gorokhova, the Russian author said in describing totalitarian Russia, “The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying but they keep lying anyway…” What Orwell envisioned for 1984 has come forty years late, but the parallels are frightening enough to sober any man. There is no doubt that the Founding Fathers, who worked so hard designing a system they hoped would thwart the tyranny that history promised, would call this a four-alarm fire. Whether we heed that warning and avert a complete disaster will be a heavy lift with no guarantee of success, but is certainly worth the effort.

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